


The Valley of Summer

by genarti



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Gen, Mushi - Freeform, POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 07:17:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4470206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genarti/pseuds/genarti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I can still remember it.  He was sitting on the porch with Uncle and me, and we were making baskets.  Ginko was just sitting there smoking.  He said, "I've heard stories spreading about a man who only lives in winter."</p><p>"That's me, I guess," said Uncle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Valley of Summer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miaou Jones (miaoujones)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miaoujones/gifts).



Come here, little Taro. Tell me what you've been studying in school. You're still getting good grades, right? That's important.

Mushi? Oh, my. To think, children studying mushi right in school, now! Oh, I know, they have Mushi Studies at the Tokyo Imperial University now and everything. Maybe you'll be a mushi scientist when you're grown up -- wouldn't that be something? But when your Granny was a girl, we didn't know so much about these things. We didn't have mushi scientists. We had mushi-shi instead. Not so many of those, either. I met one once.

I'm sure I've told you this story. Haven't I? Really? Oh... Maybe I only told your big sister. Well, then, bring me a cup of tea and I'll tell it now. 

Thank you, dear.

Once upon a time, when I was a girl only a little older than you, my uncle vanished up the mountain. He was a peddler in those days, as a sideline, when farming was slow. He made baskets and fish-traps all winter, woven out of bamboo he cut on the slopes of the mountain, and when he wasn't needed in the fields he'd go around to the other villages and sell them. His best business was in the big town across the mountain, because travelers came there. He could sell things to the shopkeeper, who would sell them on. We all looked forward to times when he made a good sale, because he'd bring home rice and good cloth and sometimes even little trinkets. Uncle was the kind of person who liked to make people happy. He'd always bring back a little something for Granny, and give it to her with a big smile. I think he was even happier to give her things than she was to get them.

One day in early spring, before weeding started, he loaded a heavy stack of baskets onto his back and set out for the big town. That meant going up and over the mountain, and it normally took him two days to go and come back. Instead, it was November when we came home.

All summer! We thought he was dead. They searched all over the mountain. Father especially searched and searched. He went to the big town and asked everywhere, and to all the other towns too. We nearly got our rice in too late that year, he was so busy searching. Uncle was his little brother, much younger than him, and they loved each other very much. But after weeks, even Father had to admit that he must have fallen in a ravine, or been taken by a monster, or caught in a mudslide.

And then when it was nearly winter, after months and months, Uncle came walking down the path. He had a bundle of bamboo stalks instead of his baskets, but other than that he looked exactly the same. I was the one who saw him first -- remember, I was just a girl -- and I ran screaming to Granny. I thought he was a ghost! I was terrified. But it really was Uncle.

Where had he been? Yes, that's what we were all asking. But Uncle had no idea. He really didn't. The question seemed to confuse him. He said he'd crossed the mountain, sold his baskets, and come home again, with a side trip to cut bamboo. Then he'd come home. It had been early spring, and now it was late fall, but he couldn't understand why that was either. He got angry if we pressed him, and of course we did. He didn't remember meeting any spirits, he didn't remember going anywhere else, he'd just taken a nap among the bamboo and then it had been fall. That was all he knew.

All winter, he was entirely normal. But the next spring, the same thing happened.

It kept happening, year after year. We tried everything. We followed him up the mountain -- nothing happened while anyone was looking, but either he'd lose us in the bamboo forest and vanish, or he'd come home safely and then slip away another morning. Granny and Father and Mother all made him promise not to leave the village, and he did promise, but then he'd leave anyway. I don't know if he broke the promise, or if whatever was calling him made him forget it. We couldn't lock him away -- it wasn't that kind of village. Nobody had a shed that could hold a grown man who wanted to break out. In the end, we just had to get used to it.

After a few years, most of the village had started to call him Uncle Winter. That was the only time anybody saw him, right? Even our family called him that sometimes. Only Granny refused. But Uncle never seemed to mind. He always loved a joke, that man -- he laughed at it. So he was Uncle Winter.

Then one spring, when I was seventeen years old, a foreigner came to town.

I don't know where he was from. He dressed in strange clothes: trousers, heavy shoes, a Western-style shirt. I'd never seen anything like that. Everyone I'd ever seen wore kimono. And he smoked cigarettes constantly, one after another, and the smoke had a weird sharp smell like burning medicine. Such a strange fellow. His hair was whiter than Granny's, even though he was young, and his eyes were bright green. Not just green, but the color of leaves in summer, right when the sunlight hits them. I only ever saw one eye, because he kept that white hair of his flopped forward over the other all the time, as if it were blind, and maybe it was. But he spoke good Japanese, with no more accent than any other traveler from far away, and he was polite enough.

Yes, that was the mushi-shi. His name was Ginko.

I just told you, I don't know where he came from or why he looked like that. He never said. Don't interrupt Granny, child. 

Like I say, he was polite, and he had a sidling sort of charm, so that you didn't realize he was working around to getting something from you until you'd given it to him. No, he wasn't sinister -- he wasn't a bad guy -- but he was always grinning to himself and sidling round you to do what he thought was best. I suppose that's what being a constant traveler teaches you. Give me good farmland and the village your ancestors came from, that's what I say, and you won't pick up bad habits like that. He was a good fellow in his way, that Ginko-sensei, but he had no roots.

So that's how he got himself invited to stay with us. Well, he would have had to stay with someone, since there was no inn in our little village, but we found out soon enough that he'd come to town because of our family. That is, because of Uncle Winter.

I can still remember it. He was sitting on the porch with Uncle and me, and we were making baskets. Ginko was just sitting there smoking. He said, "I've heard stories spreading about a man who only lives in winter."

"That's me, I guess," said Uncle. He wasn't annoyed yet, but he was ready to be.

Ginko just blew out a puff of smoke, which smelled awful, and said, "Well, I'm interested in that kind of thing. There are probably mushi involved. Okay if I tag along when you go up the mountain?"

"Sure," said Uncle. He didn't think it was going to do any good, you could tell, and I didn't either. But Uncle was always willing to let somebody try whatever they thought might do any good. He didn't like missing most of every year either.

So a few days went by, and Ginko spent that time eating our rice and hanging around Uncle like an old dog. He did help out here and there, and he spent a lot of time talking to other people too -- they all came by our house to see this foreign mushi-shi, nearly everyone in the village -- but mostly he just smoked his cigarettes and took notes in his little book and watched Uncle. He wasn't rude, but he was hard to get close to. He'd chat all you liked, but none of us could tell what he was thinking.

Well, Uncle had said Ginko could come along with him, you remember, but either he forgot that or the mushi in him made him forget. Oh yes, there were mushi -- don't be impatient, Taro, Granny's telling the story. I'll get to it. So I woke up early one morning to see the door closing behind Ginko. Uncle had gotten up before dawn and left without a word, but Ginko woke up too -- I told you he was watching him -- and followed him. Well, I was curious, and I was annoyed by how that man never showed anybody what he was thinking, and I thought that if he was going to solve Uncle's problem then someone from our family should be there to see it. But mostly I was curious, and I was seventeen, which is a silly and reckless age. You remember that when you're seventeen, Taro. Be a more sensible boy. Anyway, I put on my blue kimono and my sandals as quickly and as silently as I could, and I followed after them.

It was a long walk we had. And so quiet! It was misty, and the mist just seemed to eat every sound. There were plenty of birds singing, but all of that seemed to be coming from far away. It was eerie. But that wasn't mushi, I'm certain. It might have been spirits, but only the ordinary ones. It was just the hush of that kind of morning.

I don't know when Ginko realized I was following along. Maybe right from the start, but maybe not. He didn't even look round for quite a while. But when we were about a quarter of the way up, he looked right at me without the slightest bit of surprise -- just that lopsided grin of his, like he had a private joke with himself -- and gestured me to come closer, like this. I hurried to catch up and he shushed me, _shhhhhhh_ , before I could say anything. "Your uncle's preoccupied with where he's going," he whispered.

He was right about that. Uncle Winter was walking like he was in a dream, even though his eyes were open. He never looked right or left. He didn't stop for a rest, either, although I wished we could. But I wasn't going to stop if neither of them was going to. So on we went.

That was the longest I've ever walked without stopping. No breaks at all -- not for water, not for lunch, not even to use the bathroom. Of course, I didn't have lunch anyway. But we walked and we walked, all the way up almost to the top of the mountain. I was so tired! My legs felt like clay by the end.

Near the summit, Uncle Winter turned off the path into a bamboo thicket. And then he vanished! He really did. He just slipped off between the trees and I couldn't see him anymore. I gasped, I think, and Ginko laughed. Very quietly, but oh, I was mad -- I was so upset, Uncle was just _gone_ , and here this mushi-shi was laughing at me -- I wanted to hit him. No, Taro, I didn't actually hit him. We don't hit people, especially wise elders and scholars. Ginko laughed, and then he said, "He's surrounded by Mist mushi. You can't see them, so you can't see him. Follow me."

Yes, that's right, most people can't see mushi. Did you doubt your teacher? You shouldn't.

I followed Ginko through the bamboo. I was worried for Uncle, but mostly I was just excited -- we were really going to solve it! Well, Ginko-sensei was going to solve it, but I would be there to witness that! And I was frustrated, too, that I couldn't see anything. He'd explained mushi in town, that they were tiny creatures close to the source of life without any real intelligence, and that most people couldn't see them most of the time -- well, you know all this,you're a smart boy who learns these things in school -- and of course our mountain had plenty of spirits too, but I'd never run into anything like _this_. I was afraid I was going to miss everything important. And I really was worried for Uncle.

But suddenly -- what do you think happened? No, not quite yet. First I saw a cleft between two rocks, and mist all around it. And then after that, I saw Uncle, going into that cleft. Later I learned that those Mist mushi didn't have anything to do with Uncle's problem, they're just there in pockets high up on mountains sometimes, but it was all mysterious to me then. We crept up on it quietly -- I had my hands over my mouth to keep myself quiet, I wanted to much to shout out -- and looked through into a little valley.

You remember how I said it was early spring? We hadn't even woken up the fields or sowed our seeds yet. There were still bits of snow in the coldest shady corners up here on the mountain, and nothing was green yet except the plants that stay green all year. Other than that, it was brown and chilly. But in that valley, it was like summer. Everything was green. Such green! You've never seen anything like it. Everything was lush. All that mist was warm, like the steam from a bath. And scattered everywhere there were animals asleep. Yes, asleep just lying down on the grass. I remember seeing a fox, and two deer, and a whole family of squirrels, all curled up close to each other like siblings. Uncle Winter went walking dreamily into there, and then he yawned and he lay down on the grass himself, and went right to sleep.

Ginko was grinning again. He pulled me away -- he had to tug on my arm, I couldn't stop staring. I had both hands pressed to my mouth so I wouldn't shriek. It was so pretty, and so peaceful, and so awful and wrong.

"It's just as I thought," said Ginko, when we were a little distance away. He sounded very smug. "This is a place where Sleeping Summer mushi gather."

Of course I had no idea what he was talking about. He told me to gather wood first and make a fire, and pulled a little pot out of his pack for us to boil water in, and only after that was all set up did he explain.

This is what he told me. He said that there are mushi called Green Summer mushi that live in the soil. Usually they feed on plant roots. They love the summer, but they hate the cold, so when winter comes they sink deep down into the soil. Then there are other mushi called Oversleeping mushi. Those inhabit the brain of a person or an animal. They don't do it any harm. They just live there and feed off dreams so that a person doesn't remember anything they dreamed when they wake up. Plenty of people who have Oversleeping mushi in their brains never notice anything strange, their whole lives.

But Green Summer and Oversleeping mushi have a partnership. They don't need to work together, but if they're in the same place, they will. If an animal -- or a person -- with a brain full of Oversleeping comes to a place where lots of Green Summer are, they'll join together into Sleeping Summer. The person falls into a deep sleep, and then the Oversleeping feed that dream energy to Green Summer. That's when they make heat. That was why that little valley was like summer, even though it was late February. The mushi nourish the plant roots and make everything green and warm. They were using the dreams of all the creatures asleep in that valley.

Scary? Yes. It was creepy! I was scared too. But remember, little one, Uncle Winter was fine all winter. It wasn't hurting him. It just made him sleep. When winter came, the mushi couldn't make enough heat to keep the valley warm, so the Green Summer mushi crept back deep into the earth, and everybody asleep there woke up and went home. 

Well, we didn't want to leave Uncle there until winter. We wanted to fix him. Ginko told me to stay where I was, and gave me medicine to put in the water when it boiled. He said, "It's common for people who live in an area with Oversleeping mushi to have it living inside them. It's very possible that you do. You shouldn't go into that valley, or you might fall asleep too." Oh my, but that scared me too. I couldn't stop trying to remember when the last time I'd remembered a dream was.

No, I won't get like Uncle Winter. We'd fix it if any of this family did. It's much easier to find a mushi specialist these days, you know. But as a matter of fact, I do remember my dreams. So I don't have the Oversleeping mushi in my head at all. Did you dream this morning, Taro? Well then, you don't either, right? That's right.

Back then, though, I was so nervous about it that I couldn't think straight, and I kept thinking that maybe I'd gotten them since the last dream I remembered. So I stayed put and I brewed up the medicine like Ginko-sensei had asked me to. Probably that was more useful anyway. I watched, though. Ginko went into the valley -- and he was brave, I'll say that, because he just walked straight in like it was normal, and sat down next to Uncle, and started smoking. Those cigarettes of his made a smoke that coiled around Uncle and sank down to the ground -- have you ever seen smoke that's heavy like that? I haven't either, not before or since -- and after a little while Uncle started coughing. Ginko had been picking something off the ground and putting it in little cases in his pocket while he waited -- I suppose mushi, because I couldn't see what he was getting. But when Uncle started his coughing, that's when Ginko put Uncle's arm over his shoulder and hauled him up, and started lugging him back out.

Heh, not so strong as that! Uncle wasn't a big man, but Ginko walked all bent over and grumbling the whole way. Uncle was even half-awake enough to stumble along somewhat. I thought he was making entirely too much of a fuss about it. I'd helped Uncle walk one winter when he hurt his ankle, and I didn't complain half that much. But he did get him out, that mushi-shi. He got Uncle awake and out of the valley.

By that point I had a pot full of medicine. It looked like strong tea, and it smelled disgusting. Phew! It was awful. No, even worse than that.

Ginko put Uncle down and got out a teacup and fed him a cup of the stuff. It must have tasted horrible too, from the faces Uncle made -- and he was the kind of man who'd eat just about anything -- but he did drink it when I asked him to. And then he started groaning this horrible groan, _ughhhhhhh_ , like he was about to throw up, and what do you think happened? No, not that. Thick purple smoke started dribbling out his ears! It was awful. It dribbled out, and it hit the ground, and then it just sank into it and vanished. I scrambled away so none of it would touch me -- oh, my heart was beating like a rabbit's!

Ginko-sensei, though, he just looked smug. Intent, too -- he watched the whole thing like a hawk. "Good, good," was all he said. He gave me more of the medicine. Uncle had to drink that stuff every day for a week. Until nothing came out of his ears for two days. More purple smoke every afternoon for five days, ugh! It was terrible. But you know, it did fix the problem. Ginko-sensei told me that that would cure Uncle of the Oversleeping mushi, and I guess it did. Uncle said he remembered his dreams, after that.

"What if he gets them again?" I asked. He'd said they were common in this area, after all.

"Oh, he might," said Ginko. He didn't sound at all worried, which was a little annoying, but mostly reassuring. "But even if your uncle is reinfected, those mushi that got linked to the Green Summer mushi of this valley won't be there. Any new Oversleeping will just feed on his dreams a little. As long as he avoids this valley, he'll be fine."

That's it. He gave me that medicine, and then he wandered off over the mountain, away from our village. He didn't ask for payment or anything. Uncle was still woozy, so I had to wait for him to wake up more before we went home. But after that day -- after that week of medicine -- he was just fine. He never went up over the mountain again. Most of the village called him Uncle Winter until the day he died, but we saw him all year long. Oh, he loved the summer, after that. He used to just stand in the sunshine on a hot day and smile up at the sky.

Oh yes, the valley was still there. A few times I had to cross the mountain to take baskets to town, and I slipped away to go look at it, from a good safe distance. There were always creatures fast asleep in there. But never any people. If we still lived there, instead of here in the city, I'd take you children up to see. It's important to remember these things.

No, you can't have another story. Granny just told a very long one. Ah, my voice is tired. But you can have a snack before it's time to start on your homework. Yes,come along. Help me up -- there we go. You're a good boy, Taro. There, you've heard my mushi-shi story. How about you tell me more about what you're learning about mushi now, while I make us tea?


End file.
